


talk radio

by arbitrarily



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-03 09:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13337907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: "Having a baby," Winnie said. "You might as well rob a bank."





	talk radio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



  
"Having a baby," Winnie said. "You might as well rob a bank."

They were clocking their third hour on the road when Winnie said it. The weather had just turned, and Gloria squinted out into it, the misery only a Minnesota February could bring. Donner Party weather, her stepdad used to say.

Gloria frowned deeper. "How's that now?"

“You know how much it costs to raise a kid these days?”

“I haven’t gone and tallied up the final bill just yet.” Gloria flipped the right turn signal on, _tsk_ -ed under her breath as the stale light went red, the car ahead of them dawdling. She was a patient woman who lacked it for unnecessary inefficiencies. She wondered what a necessary inefficiency might look like; children, probably. 

“I was reading about it,” Winnie said. “On the internet.”

“It’d be premature of me,” Gloria continued. “A real counting your chickens before they hatch sort of situation.”

“$304,480.” The turn signal clicked, clicked, clicked. "That's big time money. That's bank robbing money. Like, a whole string of banks. Crossing state lines to rob some banks kind of money."

Gloria cocked an eyebrow and inclined her head towards Winnie before she cut the wheel. "This a warning, a cry for help, or probable cause?"

"It's a metaphor. No, it's hyperbole. It's a figure of speech, is what it is. Bank robbing."

It went quiet then, the shared neat space of Gloria's car, but for the radio and the spilled marble ping of sleet cascading off the car roof and windshield.

“Yeah, if I was a money guy, I’d say that sounds about right. $304,480.”

“$304,480,” Winnie said again. She said it like she had lost it, that many bills just went flying from her hands, caught on the same winter wind trying to rock their car down the highway. Or, no, not lost it, but looked on as it remained out of reach. Behind a glass case like it was the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond was probably worth more than that, but Gloria wasn’t a money guy or a diamond guy. She did know it was hard to want the things you didn’t have; it was a loss all its own. Winnie watched out the window. There was ice on the roads now and Gloria grit her teeth, turned the defroster on.

“See, my big worry,” Winnie said, perking up, “besides the obvious, is I get pregnant, I have the kid, and I find out — I don’t even like the little bugger.”

“That won’t happen. You hungry?”

“Always.” There was a sign, bleary through the streaked window, for a Wendy’s or a McDonald’s or some such at the next exit. “And, I know. I know. Maternal instinct. Mothers love their babies. Except for when they don’t. And even then, they were hardwired for it, or they were supposed to be. I’m getting to thinking there’s a whole ordeal of coulda, woulda, shouldas when it comes to the human condition and the continuation of the species.”

“Burgers?”

“You betcha.”

Gloria pulled off the exit. She guided the car into the skid as the tires took frictionless to the ice.

“That wasn’t what I was gonna say,” Gloria said.

“Nope?”

“Nah.” Tom Petty was on the radio now. The road had gone slicker than she liked, but the tires handled it. The golden arches were lit up ahead. “What I was thinking was, it’s you. And it’d be your baby. And that’s a part of you, y’know?” Gloria liked to think she had a decent enough way with words, of putting her thoughts into a form someone else could digest and understand. But she didn’t know how to whittle this feeling down into manageable simplicity: Nathan. Her son. That feeling she got, to look upon him and know, not just intelligently but intuitively, that he was a part of her. “And if he’s a part of you," she heard herself saying, "and you being you, there’s no way you’re not gonna like the little fella.”

“Or the little gal.”

“That too.”

She could see Winnie’s quiet grin spreading across her face out of the corner of her eye. They’d be on the road for three hours and they still had the better part of two left if this weather held. Minnesota really was too big a state to chase a lead, she thought. Drive all day, never leave the state. Didn't rob a bank, either. They pulled off at the exit, got themselves a couple of burgers, and pulled back onto the on-ramp, quiet all the while, content in the shared silence. 

“So, you wanna bet on it then?” Winnie asked. “Me taking to the Little Lopez?”

Gloria took a big bite of her hamburger. She wished she had more pickles. She wished they were home already. She shook her head. It was cold out there, both weather and metaphor. She saw to the evidence of it each day. “I don’t wanna have to take your money. And besides, you’re gonna need that $304,480.” She smiled; so did Winnie. "Come on now, let's get home."

 

 

 


End file.
